Palo Alto Weekly

Around the world, one plate at a time

Castro Street's Cijjo has something for everyone

by Sheila Himmel

If you Google the word "Cijjo" you get the restaurant in Mountain View, and only the restaurant in Mountain View. That is by design. The three-month-old Cijjo Cosmopolitan Tapas Lounge is one of a kind.

The owners are Silicon Valley finance and technology buddies who have traveled and eaten all over the world, and wanted a place to eat that way at home. One of them came upon a little store in Spain called Cijjo and liked the sound of it, which is: "SHAI-jo."

Many restaurants take liberties with the tapas concept, calling anything on a small plate a tapa. Cijjo pays respect to the Spanish origin of tapas, which range from bar snacks to omelets that go particularly well with cocktails and wine.

For co-owner and general manager Trisha Pham, the idea is: "Everyone can get what they want and be happy."

Another common tapas misconception is that they are somehow related to fusion. At Cijjo, each dish reflects its country of origin, with accommodation for California ingredients.

Food, wine and even beers on draft (such as wood-aged Gentlemen's Club ale) change often. Small producers populate the international wine list. Advice and tastes are freely given, and you get to choose from a refreshingly large selection of wines by the glass.

Customer-friendly, gluten-free, vegetarian and vegan items are also starred. Ninety-percent of the menu gets a star.

The international charcuterie plate ($15) glistens with ribbons of French-style duck prosciutto, Italian bresaola (air-dried beef) and fabulous jamon Iberico de bellotta, the cured leg of Spanish acorn-fed pig on display at the bar. All are delicious in their own way, and this platter is enough for four people to share. On the down side, all this lovely meat came with a couple of cornichons and wimpy bread. Better bread and a little mustard might be nice.

Westphalia pork belly ($15) was also very tasty. Rubbed in spice and braised, the meat was rich but not too fatty. Cantaloupe puree adds color but will be better when cantaloupe is in season.

Piedmont truffle fries ($6) were thin, crispy and not drowning in white truffle butter. Served in a wax-paper lined cone, they were flecked with Parmesan and chives.

The Lyonnaise salad ($9) married a creamy warm poached egg with salty, chewy diced lardons, but the curly leaves of frisee, on which they made their bed, lacked oomph. Maybe the dressing was a little dull.

Our server, snappy in a tie and vest, was uncommonly helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. When asked, he made good suggestions about both wine and food.

Like the servers, the restaurant is dressed up. There are purple curtains, dramatic lights and each white table gets a vase of bright flowers.

Things are evolving for the 80-seat restaurant, which opened Dec. 26. Some dishes feel like too much ado. The owners found that the all-small-plates menu didn't appeal to everyone, so added some larger dishes such as squid ink pasta, chorizo and mussels, fish and chips and tarte flambé. They started with dinner only, then added lunch and Sunday brunch, and soon will have a Saturday brunch.

Posted by Max Hauser,
a resident of another community
on Apr 4, 2014 at 4:07 pmMax Hauser is a registered user.

Thanks for doing this review.

I wanted to point out an error that some of us caught and corrected in earlier writing on the Voice website about this new restaurant (links below), but that unfortunately reappeared in this review.

This restaurant's novel name is correctly phoneticized "sy-jo," not "shai-jo." That was a point of confusion created by the web site, as I'll explain.

This information comes directly and emphatically from co-owners Jon Tran and Trisha Pham, who asked me in the past to make it clear. Jon said he put the phoneticization "shai-jo" originally on the restaurant's web site; he told me he'd intended the H to be "silent," as in sy-jo, and that he planned to correct the web site to make this clearer (which evidently hasn't happened yet, no doubt amid the myriad issues that new restaurateurs must deal with). All of the restaurant's personnel, including the owners, say it "sy-jo."

Posted by Misunderstood,
a resident of Evergreen Park
on Apr 6, 2014 at 2:56 pm

Was this store in Spain or Catalonia? In Catalan, it would be, " see-jho". The name does not ring true to Castilian Spanish, which I am fluent in. It appears to me to be another dialect, and Catalan is pretty much a different language. The name could not be Aragonese, either. Perhaps some fairly obscure dialect?

Maybe the owners were confused about where in Spain they were.

In reality, the origin of tapas is Moorish, and " became" Spanish in the fifteenth century in Granada, in southern Spain.

I suspect the owners of this restaurant are mistaken or misunderstood something.

True tapas include a LOT of vegetables and salad, not evident on the menu. This sounds more like " fusion", not authentic tapas.

Posted by Max Hauser,
a resident of another community
on Apr 6, 2014 at 3:55 pmMax Hauser is a registered user.

"Misunderstood:" Please be aware --

1. As Cijjo's owners earlier explained it to me and to others, "Cijjo" actually is a wholly made-up name, _inspired_ by, but not literally the same as, a business name they encountered in Spain. (This article seems to've condensed that explanation somewhat.) Cijjo was chosen for the restaurant because it's a unique word, as the article's first paragraph mentioned.

2. Regardless of the inspiration, and of English or Castilian phoneticization rules, the new restaurant is indeed spelled Cijjo, and meant to be pronounced "sy-jo."

3. This (I believe, single-visit) review article did not try to describe the full scope of Cijjo's small-plates menu, which numbered at least 30 dishes on my most recent visit (of a dozen or so meals there). The article didn't, for instance, mention the bowls of flash-fried peppers, the nuts or olives, the several diverse salads, that figured in some of the small plates I've enjoyed.

I suggest to stop by Cijjo a few times -- try some range of its offerings -- if you wish to know both where the menu reflects and where it departs from Spain's famous tapas traditions.

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